Not true. In fact there's an entire government program for this: The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. It funds all sorts of research with the aim of commercialization. The goal is for the government to eventually have a source to buy from. It's how the government gets private industry to develop products that the government needs, but are not feasible for companies to develop on their own.

For example: need vitamins for the dolphins you use to find underwater mines? No company would ever develop such a product on their own. So the government decided to fund that research and production: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbir.gov%2Fsbirsearc...

The mandatory fee is the "catastrophic claims" fee which pays the medical bills of anyone in a car accident. I don't think uninsured/underinsured is actually mandatory.

Perhaps we don't understand the question because you've not adequately defined what you're asking for. From your responses it seems you are taking a very narrow definition of artificial intelligence and excluding things like machine learning that very much belong under the umbrella of "AI".

So are you taking the position that things like Watson, Google Deepmind, etc are not advances in AI but rather old techniques coupled with an increased computational capacity and knowledgebase that weren't available before? If so, then who cares? If not, then what is your point?

I think "MS in Information Assurance" was referring to a Master of Science degree, and not a Microsoft cert. But don't let me get in the way of you telling off someone about their reading skills. :)

About as scientific as climate science. Meaning, each have theories at the micro level that have been tested using experimentation (ie. supply and demand, absorption of radiation by greenhouse gases, etc). But at the macro-level, each attempts to model extremely chaotic systems through (mostly) observation and pattern fitting.

So, don't be all smug about economics not being very scientific, because climatology isn't all that far ahead of it.

There was a great television movie last year about Feynman's involvement in the Rogers Commission. William Hurt plays the part of Feynman and does a magnificent job.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2421662/

You know how I can tell you've not done any real fishing or hunting in your life? Because you believe if PETA can't "monitor" sportsmen, that sportsmen will not be monitored. But in reality, wildlife and natural resources officers constantly monitor sportsmen.

But please, don't let facts get in the way of you bashing the gun lobby.

I am thinking that most of those corporations measure productivity by hours spent in front of a computer, which means they see younger programmers working 80 hours a week spitting out the same code that would take an older programmer 40 hours to be "more productive".

But your point is well taken; perception of productivity is pretty messed up and I think that explains a big part of why these workers are striking.

OMG. If that is what Europe really wants, then they can keep it. Maybe they don't realize that workers don't magically become "productive" out of the womb. Nor do they when someone hands them a diploma. Productivity increases with experience.

By saying a nation should only employ productive workers and leave the unproductive unemployed, you are effectively saying that anyone young should just be a dependent of the state while older people get to reap the benefits of labor shortages.

So what happens when your older "productive" workers all retire? All of those "unproductive" young people you wanted to keep unemployed will still be unproductive. I suppose you could just import productive immigrants. But eventually nobody will want to come to your country because you're going to have to tax most of their pay in order to support the multitudes of unproductive people in your country.

No. I think I prefer America's way of doing things. We provide subsidies to our low-wage earners in the hopes that they increase their productivity through experience. It isn't perfect, but it is at least sustainable.

Yes, they certainly will.

By identifying the high risk teenaged drivers we can target them with additional training and restrictions that will reshape their driving behavior and make them lower risk. And we could mandate that the insurance companies pay for some of that additional training.

This would similar to health insurance companies being mandated to cover preventative health services.

The FDA is a lot more strict about the manufacturing of hospital equipment than the BATFE is about guns.

Soviet Space Program, NASA, and the European Space Agency.

I'm not saying Gates is necessarily wrong, but it is awfully convenient that the most important issue for the world just happens to be the one his charity is involved in.

I question whether you can even know what will "save the world". Look at risks to human civilization. What is the impact of malaria on the population versus say, an asteroid crashing into our planet? The latter is more catastrophic to the survival of our species than the former, but the probability of occurrence is much lower.

What if the Internet becomes instrumental to the identification of an asteroid threat with sufficient time to mitigate its effects? Will the Internet have 'saved the world'?

Again, I'm not saying that curing disease isn't important, and I applaud Mr. Gates' efforts even if I may question his motives. But I don't think he can possibly know what will and will not "save the world".

That isn't true. Under Carter and Clinton the public debt went up every single year. In fact, the last time we managed to actually pay down the debt was in 1957.

Go ahead. Just be sure to add every loophole and tax deduction that was available during Eisenhower's times. Otherwise you're just advocating confiscation of wealth, which is not such a lovely road for us to go down. But hey, high tax rates with generous deductions would encourage spending, and that would be fine by me.